Winter's Thaw
by hbcooper
Summary: One-shot. During a mission in unfriendly territory, Rogue gets cozy with a fellow Avenger.


All characters owned by Marvel

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Author's notes: So, I'm supposed to be taking a break from writing, but this story has been hanging out on my computer for a little while and I thought I'd share it just for fun.

This popped into my head after watching Avengers-Civil War this summer. The Avenger featured alongside Rogue in this story is the Winter Soldier, but I confess that I mainly know the character of Bucky Barnes from the movies (go ahead and picture Sebastian Stan while reading this). I haven't read much of his history in the comics, mainly the Brubaker/Epting run where he was re-introduced, so I didn't flag this as a Bucky Barnes's story in case my continuity is a little screwy – like I said, this is just for fun.

This story is set shortly after Rogue first joined the Avengers. She has control of her absorption ability and does not have Wonderman's powers. Not sure where Bucky was during that timeframe, but for the sake of this story, he was running covert ops missions wherever he was needed. Kept things pretty PG-13, I wasn't looking to start any new ships or anything, just thought the two characters would play well together. Enjoy!

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 **Winter's Thaw**

The frigid air burned his lungs with every breath, and the crunch of frost covered snow slowed his sprint to a cautious jog. Even so, he was still yards ahead of her, the distance between them gaining.

He swore under his breath and threw himself into the long shadows cast by the frozen moon. The nearest safe house was on the other side of the city, and any rescue hours away. They would never make it, not without being spotted. So far they had been lucky, it had been miles since they had seen a single soul, but that luck couldn't hold forever. The city blocks looming ahead of them appeared deserted, but they needed to get out of the open before they froze to death. This time of night in Mid-January, the temperature hadn't bottomed out yet. It was still dropping like a stone, he could feel it through his insulated costume. They couldn't keep going forever.

She stumbled when she finally caught up to him, and he had to catch her before she twisted her damned ankle in the icy ruts along the sidewalk. She stiffened in his arms and pulled away angrily, but not before he had felt her shaking and shivering despite having run a half marathon to evade their pursuers. He pushed her back to the shadows and laid a finger to his lips to silence her. Her nostrils flared and her eyes flashed, but in the clear night her voice would have carried like a siren. They couldn't take any more chances.

He peered around the corner of the building that hid them from prying eyes. Halfway down the street, a block of cold-war era apartments surrounded by a chain link fence stood dark and silent against the night sky. They needed to get out of the cold, to shelter somewhere for a few hours. A motel would be dangerous, probably impossible in this city after what they had just done. They were too recognizable, and word of their little dust up would have gotten around by now. The wrong people would be looking for them. A vacant apartment, especially a shoddily constructed one, wouldn't exactly be warm, but it would have to do. Grabbing her by the arm, he yanked her with him from the shadows. He felt her tense up and try to pull away, but he gripped her tighter and practically drug her across the street at his pace, not hers.

 _Condemned_ , the tattered sign decorating the fence proclaimed in Russian, slated for destruction. They squeezed through a hole in the enclosure, and the Winter Soldier, James 'Bucky' Barnes, hoped he wasn't trapping himself and his companion inside a cage.

The lock on the building's main door had already been jimmied open and they stepped over small drifts of snow to mount the stairs. There would be no sleeping tonight, he would have to keep an eye out for those chasing them or any other bums looking for shelter behind the paper thin walls. They were alone for now, silent save for the sound of her heavy breathing. The rapid in and out raised a cloud of vapor that twinkled in the moonlight before they moved up the stairs and further into the darkness.

Bucky wanted to yell at her again, to scream, and the anger spun his stomach in sick circles. The unwanted emotion was clouding his better judgement. On a mission, he was usually driven, focused, but there had been something about _this_ mission, about this girl, that had him all riled up. Maybe it had been doomed from the start…

With his bionic arm, he forced open the door to an apartment on the building's top floor. The roof access was close, at least they'd have an eagle's view and an alternate exit if they had to, but that was about the best that could be said for the place. The moon painted large, white squares on the floor beneath the curtain-less windows. The room wasn't completely empty, it was decorated with the remnants of someone else's life, long forgotten. A table, a couple of chairs, and a questionable looking davenport littered the bare linoleum. He'd stayed in worse.

She shuffled in behind him and leaned heavily over the table. Bucky wedged one of the wooden chairs underneath the door handle and did a quick sweep of the room while she just stood there catching her breath. The temperature in the room wasn't much better than outside, but it would do. If they could hole up for a few hours, their rescue should come in the form of a Quinjet or one of Nat's fancy cars.

The Black Widow, known to most of her Avengers' teammates as Natasha, but to Bucky she would always be Natalia. He felt the anger twist him tighter. This mess was Nat's doing, the mission a favor to her. It had even been her idea to bring the X-Man along, but Bucky exhaled, knowing deep down that even though he wanted to, he couldn't blame Natalia for _his_ screw up.

In one of the apartment's closets he found a threadbare blanket that reeked of mothballs, but only the one. Lovely, Bucky thought and gritted his teeth, they would have to share. When he emerged from the bedroom, she was curled up on one end of the davenport with her knees drawn to her chest. Disgusted, he threw the blanket at her.

"I'm going to activate our homing beacon," he growled. "Look through the cupboards, there might still be something here we can use."

The blanket hit her in the head and knocked her stocking hat sideways, that white stripe of hair spilling out of it to fall across her face. Those large eyes of hers, green he thought, the color of summer grass, glared at him from beneath dark lashes.

"Right." Rogue clenched her teeth and gingerly stood.

He watched her limping steps in disbelief. How could she be worn out from their escape? The X-Men were supposed to be made of sterner stuff. He knew espionage wasn't really Rogue's strong suit, but Nat and Steve had vouched for the girl's skills. He never should have brought her, never should have come into unfriendly territory with someone he'd never worked with before. There was no trust between them. But truthfully, it hadn't been her fault the mission had gone south. No, that blame lay squarely on his shoulders. Nat had needed information, names, that she had been unable to shake loose on her own. Rogue had gotten what they needed from their informant with her mutant powers, but there had been a struggle. When Bucky had pulled his gun and stepped in to rescue her and take care of the man, Rogue had stopped him. More importantly, he had _let_ her stop him. He had let her interfere with their objective. Worse than that, the pair had argued over what to do with the informant, loud enough that their cover had been blown. They had hightailed it in a hail of bullets, starting their hours on the run from every gangster in the city.

Bucky felt like smacking his head against the table. The big, bad Winter Soldier had let a pretty face distract him, and nearly gotten them killed because of it. Rolling his eyes at his own stupidity, he emptied the pouch on his belt and set about his task. The homing beacon wasn't damaged, but they would receive no confirmation that their S.O.S. had been heard, the beacon only transmitted one way. All they could do was wait and cross their fingers. If there was no word by morning…well, they'd cross that bridge when they came to it.

A cupboard door banged behind him and he whirled, ready to tear into her, but before his eyes she crumpled to the floor in a heap.

"Rogue?" he whispered. "Rogue!" He was over her, his hands shaking her shoulders. She hissed and recoiled from the touch of his bionic arm. Bucky pulled his hands away, but nearly choked at the dark glimmer of her blood coating the metal of his hand.

"You…you're hit?" he croaked.

"M'all right," she whispered through clenched teeth. "Went straight through."

"Doesn't matter, god dammit! We're in the middle of nowhere!" Bucky crouched next to her on the floor and pulled a flashlight out of his pocket, thinking better of it before he turned it on. Even a light that small would stand out like a flare to any two-bit Russian hoods searching the streets. Swinging his eyes around the apartment, he spotted the windowless bathroom. If they closed the door, he could turn on the flashlight and see what the hell mess she had gotten into, but he had pretty limited supplies with him to pack a wound or clean it.

Swearing under his breath again, Bucky helped her to stand. She inhaled sharply but didn't cry out. The girl had run over ten miles with a bullet hole in her shoulder, the shoulder he had wrenched her across the street by. _Jesus_ …his stomach turned again for a whole different reason. Rogue had tried to pull away from his grasp outside, and he had gotten pissed and squeezed her tighter.

Depositing her lightly on the sink's cracked counter, he wedged the door shut and flicked on his flashlight. One of Stark's inventions, with a twist of the base it became a lantern that illuminated the small space, casting dramatic shadows over the both of them.

She had lost her stocking hat, and closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the dingy mirror. Her hair, an impossible tangle of auburn and white curls, framed her face in wild waves. In one pocket he carried a small roll of gauze and tape, in another a flask of whiskey, and he leaned in to inspect the gunshot. Removing the glove from his flesh and blood hand, he tugged down the zipper that started at the neck of her bodysuit, the creamy skin beneath a sharp contrast to the dark fabric. He had to peel the material, normally able to withstand smaller caliber bullets, from the mess on her shoulder. The blood had dried in spots and practically glued the costume to her skin. She jumped when it pulled free, the motion jostling the breasts Bucky was trying his best to ignore, but Rogue had caught his stolen glance.

"Second base on a first date?" she teased as they struggled to free her injured shoulder from the skintight suit. "You old timers move fast."

Bucky scowled at her. "Were you planning on telling me about this, or were you just going to bleed out during the night?" He kept his eyes in neutral territory, but every breath brought her soft skin into contact with his arm.

"Like you care." She narrowed those grass green eyes at him and he had to bite his tongue to keep from screaming at her again. Why was he snapping at her? This wasn't Rogue's fault, it was _his_ , his lack of focus that had almost gotten Steve's newest protégé murdered, and all over some two-bit KGB wanna-be hood Nat needed dirt on…

"I never should have brought you," he muttered in Russian, and started cleaning around the wound with whiskey soaked gauze.

"Then why did you?" she countered in English.

He opened his mouth to ask how she had understood him, but shut it again. Of course. Her mutant powers. The woman still had some lingering pieces of the gangster she had absorbed floating around in her head. It was a shame she didn't still have some of her friend Wolverine's healing factor as well, the hairy pipsqueak had made her absorb his powers before they had set off from New York. Wolverine was extremely overprotective of his fellow X-Man, and had been dead set against Rogue coming on this mission. Maybe Bucky should have headed the old man's warning.

Espionage and assassination clearly weren't Rogue's bag, despite being raised by the mutant terrorist Mystique. From what Bucky had seen of her so far, Rogue was too straightforward to blend into the shadows. Her hair, her personality, her pretty face and hourglass curves were too recognizable, unlike another women he knew.

"Natasha," he said in answer to Rogue's question.

Natalia had pushed Bucky to bring Rogue along on the mission. The Black Widow was just as beautiful, just as bold as the girl in front of him, but Nat blended seamlessly into the background, trained since girlhood to change shapes as readily as Rogue's foster mother. Nat had thought that Rogue, used to becoming someone else thanks to her power to borrow the thoughts and memories of others, would be a perfect candidate for the Avengers' more clandestine operations. Those mutant powers allowed Rogue to learn any language, uncover any hidden information with the merest touch. Such skills could be invaluable to their covert activities, but Rogue was clearly out of her depth. She was tough, a fighter from her files, but the girl was more accustomed to breaking down walls than hiding in their shadows. Bucky was right, he never should have brought her.

He cleared his throat. "We got lucky," he said, and brushed her hair from the nape of her neck and out of his way. His touch raised goosebumps on her smooth skin, but it had to be from the cold, he told himself. "It did go clean through. I don't think you've lost too much blood, but you might be a little woozy until we can get you back to base."

She laughed, throaty and warm, her eyes closed again. "Didn't you know? Lucky's my middle name, sugar." She sounded drowsy already. That accent of hers, somewhere in the Deep South, Mississippi maybe, coming on stronger.

Bucky smiled. "That's funny. Steve said it was Marie." He settled closer. "Sorry, Rogue, but this is going to hurt. Lots." Her long fingers curled into the chest of his costume. He poured a couple shots worth of the whiskey into the wound, forcing it into the ragged hole in her flesh. She didn't cry out, but her fingers twisted his shirt, the thighs wrapping either side of him pressing against the outside of his slim hips.

"So," she was biting her bottom lip so fiercely he thought she would draw blood. "You and Natasha. You're…y'know…?" Her tone implied the question, and Bucky laughed and tore a piece of surgical tape from the tiny roll.

"Nat and I aren't anything," he stated flatly.

"Oh, come on," she grimaced. "You two are…?"

He rolled his eyes. "What? Fuck buddies?"

Those green eyes popped open and her cheeks flushed in the dim light. "I was gonna say 'friends with benefits'!"

He pressed the tape in place against the gauze and grinned. "Back in the day, we called them dance partners." Their laughter was awkward, and she leaned forward, her hair a fragrant curtain between them. "Either way," he murmured, "that's none of your business." He swallowed. Her fingers were still curled into the fabric of his shirt, and his hands, one flesh, one metal, pulled her closer. She shivered, and it brought him back to reality. "We need to warm you up. It's gonna be a long night."

With an effort, they got her back into the top of her costume. He helped her to the floor and got her settled on the davenport. He saw that the couch's back was stained on one end with the dark spatter of her blood.

"Try to get some rest," he said softly. "I'll keep watch." He took a slug off the flask before handing it to her.

Standing at the sharp edge of the shadows, his eyes strafed the empty and frozen street below. Morning was still hours away, the sunrise had yet to kiss the horizon. With it should come their rescue, but what if it didn't? What if there had been no one on hand to answer their distress call? They had no food, no water, and it was still cold as all get out. Worst of all was Rogue's injury. She was a tough girl, she had definitely proven that, but he didn't know how fast she could move if trouble found them. Bucky swore to himself he wouldn't let anything else happen to her.

In his mind's eye, he whiled away the minutes working out escape routes on top of alternate escape routes, when a soft sound broke his concentration. Rogue, asleep on the davenport, whimpered.

Bucky vaulted the end of the couch. The last thing they needed was her screaming from some nightmare. He knelt on the floor and leaned over her face, carefully avoiding the wounded shoulder as he shook her.

"Rogue?" he whispered.

One of her hands reached up and brushed the chin length hair from his face and caressed his cheek, rough with days of stubble.

"Remy…" she murmured, and pulled a startled Bucky to her lips, kissing him with a passion so fierce it took his breath away. He tried to break free, but she moved with him, twining her fingers in his hair, deepening the kiss and parting his lips with her tongue.

It was an amazing kiss, but it wasn't meant for him, and Bucky untangled himself from her limbs and lips.

"Rogue," he breathed against her mouth. "Anna, wake up."

Those eyes fluttered open dreamily, then widened when they focused on the man so close to her.

"Bucky?" She had pushed them on to the floor, and was currently draped across his lap. Even in the dark, he knew those cheeks had to be flaming red again.

He smiled. "After that, I think you better call me James."

 **The End**


End file.
